This invention relates to dust collectors for radial arm saws.
In recent years, radial arm saws have increased in popularity, largely because of their great versatility. This popularity has been enhanced by the development of dust collecting systems for such pieces of equipment, greatly reducing the dangerous accumulation of wood chips and air-suspended dust in the shop or home.
The first dust collector designed for radial arm saws, which is shown in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,401,724, was highly successful commercially. This dust collector comprised a funnel-shaped flat-bottomed shroud positioned at the rear of the saw worktable and arranged to be arcuately moved thereover in alignment with the saw blade. The shroud was mounted on a sheet metal support having a lip which clamped between the fence and rear table of the saw and cantilevered beyond the rearmost portion of the saw table. This support proved sowewhat difficult to install and inconvenient to use, limiting the angles at which the saw could be operated and making it inconvenient to adjust the table clamping device, which was typically positioned beneath it.
My next approach to the problem was simply to eliminate the sheet metal support member and to bolt the floor of the shroud directly to the table. While admittedly simpler, this arrangement still did not permit full rotation of the shroud to align with the saw; additionally, I found that the floor of the shroud tended to distort, permitting sawdust to escape or be packed beneath it.